Hook and the Modern Children
by Alibi Nonsense
Summary: Jack and Maggie were born a couple of decades later. Someone should have warned Hook.


"Lesson one," said Hook, pacing and trailing his hook across Jack and Maggie's impromptu school desks. "Why parents hate their children." His eyes slid over to Maggie, who was looking bored out of her mind, and Jack, who was fiddling with some moving-picture gadget in his hands Hook hadn't ever seen before. It annoyed him nevertheless. "Anyone?"

"The great existential pit of despair and dragging obligations associated with childhood?" said Jack, not looking up from his gadget. He jammed a thumb several times against the picture and made several little people explode.

Hook blinked at him. "Very probably," he said. He shared a bewildered glance with Smee.

"General angst?" piped up Maggie. "She reads to us every night, but I think that's just because she wants us to get a good education."

Jack, beside her, gave a grunt of agreement. This was the sum total of his engagement with the class. Hook, irritated, considered taking the thing away from him but was stopped by the thought that it may not endear the child to him as he was hoping. Instead, he coughed. Jack's focus stayed entirely on the screen.

"Mind you," said Maggie, pulling a similar device out of her pocket and rubbing the picture with her thumb for a few seconds before putting it away, "I don't think she _hates_ us."

"Really?" said Hook. "I don't see it."

"She loves us," said Jack. "It's just very exhausting having kids."

Hook opened his mouth to disagree… and then closed it again as he realised his 'they like it when you go to bed because they get a break' argument had just been refuted in front of him. "Yes, well, children are annoying," he said.

"So are nagging adults," said Jack. "Can we go now? Somewhere with wifi? It's kind of impossible to play Fortnite on mobile data."

"Or," said Hook, gritting his teeth, "you could perhaps _not_ play …'Fortnight'… for twenty minutes and we could talk about how happy your parents were before you were born. How happy they'll never be again because of you."

"I mean it's 2018," said Jack. "Donald Trump's president, the world's gone to shit, they're not exactly going to want to be celebrating."

"Hashtag death memes," said Maggie.

Jack shot her a flat look.

Maggie laughed. Threw both of her arms diagonally up to the side and tucked her head into the crook of an elbow. "Hashtag dead memes," she said.

"You dab again and I'll rickroll you into next week," said Jack. "I'll find a kazoo version."

Maggie covered her mouth with her hands and continued to giggle. "Sorry Mr. Hook," she said, "I know you're, like, not in on it. Sorry. Back to talking about parental angst and all that crap."

Hook looked back and forth between them, himself paused, and then cleared his throat. "So you don't disagree, then?" he asked. "That your parents would be happier with you out of the picture…?"

The children shrugged.

"And this doesn't anger you? Your father not paying attention to you no matter what lengths you go to?"

"He poked me on Facebook yesterday," said Jack. "He's on point with Snapchat and Insta. It's kind of embarrassing how well he keeps up, actually, not the other way round."

"He knows my Tumblr handle," said Maggie. "It's really embarrassing."

Hook blinked. "He interacted with you three times that week," he said. "I watched. I saw."

Jack held up his gadget to show Hook a list of brightly-coloured rectangles full of words. "He sent me twenty-six texts yesterday," he said. "Dad never switches off. Like, helicopter-parent level never switching off. He streamed Maggie's school play to twitter."

"He did a _running commentary_ on Jack's baseball game," said Maggie, "and then he posted it to Youtube. God, it's so annoying. Can you make him _stop_?"

"He was constantly staring at the same device for the entire week," said Hook, and then realised how futile the argument was when both of them decided that was the moment to _yet again_ take a quick finger-aided flick through several reams of gadget text. "How is this the modern world?"

"I don't know, Captain," said Smee from behind. He handed Hook a tumbler of aged Scotch and stood beside him for a few moments. Smee was truly worthy of first-mate.

"I fear they do not listen," he murmured.

Smee gave him a consolatory pat on the shoulder and wandered off to return the bottle of Scotch to its cabinet. Hook took a swig. He was never kidnapping 21st century children again. They were incomprehensible.

…

**Bonus:**

"_Yeah my iphone's got a clock on it. Why?... Wait, you want me to _what_!?"_


End file.
